University of California, Berkeley Model United Nations (UCBMUN) 2012 Awards

by KFC on March 5, 2012

The University of California, Berkeley Model United Nations (UCBMUN) conference took place this past weekend in sunny San Francisco. Secretary-General Aniket Patil led a staff of over 70 students to host a conference for over 320 delegates. The conference has a mix of UN committees and crisis committees (including a three-way joint crisis) and is still the largest conference on the West Coast. Delegates are invited to share their experience on the UCBMUN 2012 Facebook page.

The delegation awards went to:

Best Large Delegation: University of ChicagoBest Small Delegation: Harvard UniversityGolden Bear Award (Best California Delegation): Claremont McKenna College

Awards analysis:

The University of Chicago was head and shoulders above the rest of the teams at this conference. They took half of the twelve gavels and won an award in almost every committee. Winning Best Large Delegation was a nice way for U.Chicago to end the delegate portion of their season; their final conference will be ChoMUN where they will play host.

Claremont McKenna had a breakout performance to finish second overall and captured the Golden Bear Award. The team upgraded to a large delegation for the first time earlier this Fall and won the Best Large Delegation at UC Santa Barbara’s SBIMUN over UCLA and UC Berkeley in a tight race, but this time they clearly distanced themselves from the rest and showed that they are the best team on the West Coast this year.

The University of Pennsylvania also put in a strong performance that included three gavels despite the school being on Spring break (and despite having some of its team staffing at ILMUNC China). Tulane continued its streak of successful runs on the West Coast and also put in a nice performance with many individual awards.

Harvard had been fielding a young team and that group looks ready to make a bigger impact on the circuit after winning its first delegation award of the year with the Best Small Delegation. Other teams with multiple award winners include UCLA, George Washington University, and Stanford, and UC Santa Cruz also got on board with an award. UCLA and UC Davis both fielded smaller teams than usual as they were staffing UNA-USA’s Global Classrooms Los Angeles conference the same weekend.